


Darling Boy

by therescuingtype



Category: Captain America (Movies), Marvel, Marvel (Movies), Marvel Cinematic Universe
Genre: M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-09-06
Updated: 2014-09-06
Packaged: 2018-02-16 08:10:54
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,804
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2262276
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/therescuingtype/pseuds/therescuingtype
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>The Winter Soldier isn't empty. His mind is all over the place.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Darling Boy

 

_Who the hell is Bucky?_

 

Erratic. Unstable. Unpredictable. Too high-risk. Wipe him. Wipe him, wipe him, wipe him.

 

He was always The Asset, spoken about like either a favourite toy or an unwanted pet. All of them, except for her. The red-headed woman who spoke to him softly, who touched him gently, even when he flinched away. She kissed him, and held him, talked him through the nightmares and, once or twice, talked him down. She called him James, and when they found out, they took her name from his mind along with everything else, but still, no one ever called him Bucky. 

 

...---...

 

There was a boy born in Brooklyn. He remembered it as a story told, but of course, he wouldn’t have remembered for real anyway: a boy born in Brooklyn who screamed and screamed for a night and a day, announcing his arrival, making his presence known. The nurses first praised him as a healthy, strong boy, and then couldn’t wait to see him out the door. But when they lay him in his mother’s arms he curled against her chest and settled right down.

“My darling boy,” she cooed to him, and it stuck.

 

...---...

 

The rest came to him in pieces, out of order and all mixed up in the haze of stolen memories. He remembered a blond boy, painfully thin with sunken cheeks and bags under his eyes but a grin as big and mischievous as his own. He never remembered what they’d done, just that there was trouble and they were behind it like they always were. But he remembered the conspiratorial little wink they shared, like they knew they were just going to do it again. 

 

...---...

 

The blond boy was the one who called him Bucky. The museum told him it was Steve, but the dashing, heroic images of Captain America didn’t fit with the face blazed across his foggy memories. That face belonged to someone small: just the right height and with narrow enough shoulders that his arm fit comfortably around them, small enough that it was as if he was made to curl against Bucky’s side. 

 

...---...

 

The escape took all of his strength and when they got back to camp he slept for what seemed like days. He woke now and then to strange voices in the room and the ever-present hulking shape beside his bed. The nurses spoke when they thought both were asleep but he knew his best friend - even if this enormous figure didn’t fit his memories - well enough to know when he was feigning sleep. One eye was closed, but the other was open; he could see just a sliver of blue as Steve listened to the nurses speak, listened for gossip and rumours about Bucky’s condition they weren’t sharing, listened for secrets about what had happened to him.

There was an old nurse and a young nurse. He was sure he’d heard Dum-Dum tell a joke that started like that. Before they were captured. There wasn’t much to laugh about in the Hydra prison.

“Did you hear what they did to him?” the young nurse whispered. “All that torture. Experiments, too, they said. I wonder...”

The young nurse’s voice broke off. Through his bleary, half-open eyes he could see Steve frown.

“He’s so brave,” the young nurse said fondly when she recovered herself. This made Steve very nearly crack a smile. 

_She’s sweet on you,_ he might have said, had he not been trying to convince them all he was asleep.

_Jealous?_ he might have asked, had he had the strength.

“He’s so brave,” the young nurse said wistfully. He could nearly feel her gaze on him, full of admiration but also of pity, and he didn’t like it.

“A brave boy, yes,” said the old nurse, in her gruff voice. She had no patience for pity. He was actually rather fond of her. “But still just a boy.”

Then he was asleep again, her words ringing into his dreams.

 

...---...

 

“Your work has been a gift to mankind. You shaped the century.”

His eyes searched Pierce’s face, for what he was’t sure. A tell. A clue to his intentions. There was never any praise for The Winter Soldier. Not without consequences. 

“Tomorrow morning I need you to do it one more time.”

There it was: a demand, an order. 

“Society is at a tipping point between order and chaos. Tomorrow morning we’re going to give it a push.”

The Winter Soldier was going to be the one doing the pushing, that much he understood. And afterwards there would be no more praise. It would be straight back into cryo. Or worse. He felt a twisting in his stomach and a tensing in his muscles that felt like a mission turned against him. But with Pierce in front of him and Rumlow and a half-dozen HYDRA agents standing watch he wouldn’t get far if he ran and couldn’t take them all in a fight. There was nothing to do but grip the arms of the chair they’d strapped him into and breathe deep. Panic was a sign of weakness.

“But if you don’t do your part, I can’t do mine.”

He knew this part. All he had to do was stay quiet, say what Pierce wanted to hear. He could already see agents moving into position out of the corner of his eye. Technicians getting ready to move the machine into place, Rumlow making for the exit - he could never watch this part. Coward.

“And HYDRA can’t give the world the freedom it deserves.”

It was against all of his training. He isn’t supposed to talk back, isn’t supposed to do anything but follow orders. But then the man on the bridge careened into his world and everything since has been turned upside down. His missions had been sloppy, he’d drawn attention. That alone was enough to draw Pierce’s ire. It’s not like he had anything else to lose.

“But I knew him.”

Pierce sighed, the cold disappointment that meant pain would be coming to The Winter Soldier soon.

_You made a mistake. You failed. You will be punished._

“Prep him,” was all he said.

The agents and techs were on him like flies.

“He’s been out of cryo too long,” one of them said, the weakest form of protest, the closest he had to a defender.

“Then wipe him. Start over.”

 

...---...

 

He stared at the paper in his hand, reading it over and over, scouring it for some hint that it was a fake, perhaps a cruel joke. Maybe Steve had sent it. But no, he wouldn’t. Steve didn’t have a cruel bone in his body, and anyway, he wouldn’t joke about this. It was true: he had been drafted.

“It’s about time,” his father said, clapping him heartily on the back. “It’s an honour to serve, son. A Barnes in the military, ol’ Adolf won’t know what hit him!”

His father went on and on, something about making a career of it when the war ended, about a blessing in disguise, a direction for his directionless son, much better than wasting his potential slumming with that Rogers boy.

_Rogers._

When he shipped out Steve would be alone. That scrawny boy and his mop of dirty-blond hair had careened into his life throwing punches that wouldn’t hurt a fly if they ever landed half a lifetime ago and ever since, Bucky was the one pulling him up, dusting him off, and keeping him out of fights way too big for him. At least all of the things Bucky couldn’t save him from were also keeping him out of _this_ fight.

“Imagine, my son, a war hero,” his father went on, but Bucky had stopped listening. He wondered if the offer to move in that his parents (his mother mostly, he knew) made after Steve’s mother died still stood, and if he could convince Steve to take them up on it now that he’d be gone.

Because even then, Bucky knew somehow that he wasn’t coming home.

 

...---...

 

They learned to stay quiet when Zola came for the next one. They’d keep to the back of the cells, avert their eyes, try not to draw attention to themselves. All of them, except Bucky. They were going to take one of them. It might as well be him.

“Hey,” he called, leaning heavily against the cell, gripping the bars tight. “Hey, Zola.”

“That’s _Doctor_ Zola,” came the heavily-accented reply. Dr. Zola was a small man, and Bucky almost convinced himself there was nothing intimidating about him; it was the two hulking HYDRA guards flanking him they had to fear. But they weren’t the ones dragging men off to the lab for God only knew what kinds of “tests.”

“What are you doing Barnes?” hissed Dum-Dum from behind him. From the corner of his eye he could see Jim Morita glaring at him.

“Some doctor,” he pressed. “Whatever it is you do to our guys in there, it’s not working, is it?”

Zola clenched his fist. It was working.

“Don’t be a hero, Barnes,” Dum-Dum whispered. Bucky glanced back over his shoulder even as he heard Zola’s order.

“This one today, I think,” he said as the guards moved to unlock the door. They grabbed him, one on each arm, and dragged him from the cell before he had a chance to tell Dum-Dum this wasn’t heroic. If it wasn’t him this time, it’d be one of the others. Then another, and another, and another, until they were all dead.

All he did was skip the line.

“Foolish boy,” he heard Morita mutter as he was dragged away.

 

...---...

 

_But it couldn’t be._

The posters had gone up weeks ago. By now, most of them had been replaced a few times - rude words and crude drawings would mysteriously appear on the face of Captain America overnight. No one in the camp cared much for the costumed hero promised to boost their spirits and help their fight. It all felt like a sick joke, like the men they’d watched die around them were a footnote.

_But that face._

He would know Steve anywhere. The set of his jaw, the blue of his eyes looking out from behind the mask. But the body was all wrong. Captain America was broad-shouldered and muscle-bound. It couldn’t be Steve. But it was.

_What have you done?_

“Hey, loverboy,” a voice boomed behind him, making him jump. He whirled around and there was Dum-Dum Dugan, tipping his bowler hat back to reveal eyes sparkling with mischief.

“What’d you call me?” Bucky asked.

“Well, it’s true, isn’t it? I mean, that’s your boy?” he gestured to the poster.

“I-- no---how’d you know?” 

“Not even gonna try to lie about it? That’s ballsy, Barnes. I admire that. I ain’t stupid, that’s how I know.”

Bucky could feel his cheeks burning. He saw Dugan’s massive arm swing toward him and flinched, expecting a punch. Instead, it landed across his shoulders. Affectionately.

“The way I see it, you’re still the best damn sniper in this unit,” he said. “So what’s it to me if your dame back home isn’t a dame at all? Or back home, for that matter.”

Bucky glanced back over his slumped shoulder at the poster. “I’m gonna kill him.”

“Yep, that’s love,” Dum-Dum laughed.

 

...---...

 

He would know Steve anywhere. 

Even when he couldn’t remember the name, when they’d taken that, and his own, and everything else from him, he would know the face. The face kept popping up, and he couldn’t understand why. First on the rooftop after he’d shot the target that had eluded him that day. Then again on the bridge, and finally, on the helicarrier. 

He would know Steve anywhere, and that’s why he couldn’t let him drown.

All he knew was that this was Captain America, that this was his target, and that somewhere, somehow, he had been important to him. 

 

...---...

 

_Threat._

Walking into the SHIELD office - as modest as it was now - was a risk. Everything in his programming told him not to. Never enter hostile territory unarmed. But that was where he’d find Steve Rogers. So in he walked, straight into the lobby of the drab grey office building in DC. There were gasps at first, then screams as the low-level workers milling about realized who he was.

_Killer. Hostile. Fugitive._

In seconds he was surrounded, weapons of all kinds trained on him. He could fight his way out. That’s what he was supposed to do. Avoid capture at all costs. This wasn’t capture. This was surrender.

He dropped to his knees, hands locked behind his head, staring at a spot on the linoleum floor in front of him as armed agents surrounded him.

“Identify yourself,” one of them barked.

“You know who I am,” he answered. 

He felt a hand grab his right arm and wrench it down behind his back, but none of them seemed willing to get near the metal one. He sighed and lowered it himself, clenching the fist against every urge to lash out as the cold metal cuffs closed around his wrists and he was hauled to his feet.

“Someone tell Captain Rogers he has a visitor,” he heard a voice say from behind him.

_Captive. Prisoner. Suspect._

It wasn’t an interrogation. He knew that, because Tony Stark himself had come to see him. He knew this was a test. If he failed they would keep Steve from him. Let them try.

“You’re good, you know that?” Tony asked. His cold scowl only barely masked the impressed tone in his voice. “There’s been a full scale manhunt for you for months now. And not a single trace until you waltz right in here.”

He held Tony’s gaze with his own cold stare and said nothing.

“How did you hide so well without help? Or did you have help?”

The questions were met with silence. He knew what to do if he were captured. Say nothing. Give nothing away. Get out by any means necessary.

“You know, we’re flushing out more and more HYDRA agents every day,” Tony went on. “One day, we’re gonna find whoever your handlers are now. And they’ll talk.”

The threat was empty. He knew that. So still, he said nothing.

“We knew a lot about what you’ve done. You are a very, very wanted man.” Tony leaned across the table, hands folded together. His eyes burned with rage. There was something he wasn’t saying, something nagging in Bucky’s memory. He’d known of course that he’d have few friends at SHIELD. But the hatred in Tony’s eyes belied something deeper. He wished he could remember what.

 

“Where is he?” came a frantic voice from the other side of the door a second before it clattered open at Steve Rogers came spilling into the room, fresh off a mission, still in his uniform.  

“Steve,” Tony said, standing. He stepped in front of Steve, blocking him from Bucky.

“Bucky,” Steve said. He looked past Tony, as if he wasn’t even there. “Why is he cuffed?”

“Because he’s in SHIELD custody,” Tony answered.

“Uncuff him.”

“I can’t do that.”

“Tony. Uncuff him,” Steve insisted.

“He’s wanted for the murder of at least a dozen people,” Tony said. “Including my-- including _your friend._ Howard Stark.”

“I’m not asking you to let him go free,” Steve said gently. “I’m asking you to uncuff him. We both know if he wanted to he could break out of them anyway. He’s no threat to you.”

Tony said nothing, just cast a long glance at The Winter Soldier, and left the room. A second later a guard entered, wordless unlocked the handcuffs, and left again.

“Bucky,” Steve said again. He stood, arms folded across his chest because he didn’t know what else to do. “Why are you... how... you’re _here._

“I knew you,” Bucky spoke at last. “I know you.”

Steve couldn’t hide his grin. “Yeah, you do.”

“I don’t... know me.”

“That’s okay,” Steve said. He moved closer and slowly, slowly reached out, laying his hand on Bucky’s shoulder. Bucky flinched. “It’s okay, Buck. I’m not gonna hurt you.”

_Please don’t make me do this, Buck._

“No. Because if you were going to. You would have. On the helicarrier,” Bucky said slowly. 

Steve’s smile broadened. “That’s right. You’re safe, Bucky. You did the right thing coming here.”

Bucky seemed to melt back into his chair at that. Steve gripped his arm and practically hauled him to his feet.

 

The blond boy was taller than he remembered. Taller than him now. But as he felt himself engulfed by two burly but nevertheless familiar arms, let himself fold into the embrace, and let his head fall onto one broad shoulder, felt Steve’s breath hot against his cheek, he knew: he could get used to this.  


 

**Author's Note:**

> Thanks to s-t-a-r-dusted on Tumblr for reading an early/unfinished draft and reassuring me it isn't horrible! I may have otherwise never gotten around to finishing it.


End file.
